Factory Farming Brochure

Introduction to the Brochure

Cruelty to animals is practiced on a larger scale by the food industry than by any other single sector of human activity. Each year in the United States alone, approximately 150 million mammals and 3 billion birds are sent to be slaughtered for food. To prepare animals for market, they are mutilated, shot with chemicals, deprived of natural stimuli and sociality and confined in a sterile environment. Industry calls this new approach to animal rearing total confinement or intensive livestock husbandry. We call it factory farming. … We believe that people, once informed, will not long support this industrialization of non-humans, particularly since it is no longer necessary for human survival. A moral nation is developing which says that we should not let human technology destroy the natural world.

This brochure was published in May 1976. Though the numbers of animals used has changed (in some cases, those numbers have increased), the overall picture of factory farming in the U.S. remains the same.